Re: GPL and Economics (was Re: GPL vs. sweatshops (was Re: Bias))

Francois Gouget <[email protected]> wrote:
> On Wed, 12 Jun 2002, Brett Glass wrote:
> [...]
> > >Sure you may say that there is a mitigating factor in that one can build
> > >proprietary product on top of one of the above, but as I have shown
> > >before this can only be temporary, unless you manage to kill the
> > >community around your open-source competitor.
> >
> > Not true. Apple shows no sign of dying.
> 
> And they have a long history of realeasing products built on
> top of a BSD OS. Whooops, wait, not this is pretty recent.

If you want more long-lived examples of this:

Aladdin Ghostscript
the Stronghold http server
Xig X11 server, Exceed Server.
4front (opensound.com) audio drivers.

and these are just off the top of my head.  This doesn't include the
major CURRENT ones (OSX as mentioned, StarOffice, and Netscape).  

Building a propriatary version of an OS version is one of the few
examples of an economic model that DOES work.
 
> And they don't sell any proprietary hardware either. Whoopsie, wait they
> do!

Most of the above don't.  Never heard of these folks, or are you just
being sarcastic for trolling sake?  I don't see what difference your
points are anyway - I don't see apple abandoning BSD anytime soon,
nor does it seem like OSX an financial disaster.  Does it matter that
Tivo uses propriatary HW on this linux?  

-r